I Was Counting on Forever
by piperkathleenpotter
Summary: Following the sudden death of his wife, Sam Evans reads through a month's worth of letters that reveal more than he ever expected.
1. Chapter 1

**Letter One**

At thirty years old, an hour and a half after he buries his wife, Sam Evans punches a hole in the wall for the first time.

He isn't a man prone to flashes of temper, or even flickers. Anger, for him, simmers down deep in his chest like the magma of a sleeping volcano. Other emotions, happier emotions, are much easier for him and much closer to the surface. Sam is—or was, at least a month ago—an easy-going, cheerful person.

Today, though, it is just too much. He's angry, sure, but he's also devastated, confused. His wife—his Quinn, his beautiful, brilliant, _lucky-I'm-in-love-with-my-best-friend _soul mate, his _Quinn_—is gone, and what's almost worse, what might be worse once the grief becomes less of an ax blade in his stomach and more of a punch, is that she knew, she knew for thirty fucking days, and she didn't tell him.

The only reason he knows now is because of the letters, the letters that she wrote almost every day, when he was asleep or at work or just too stupid to be aware, the letters that she kept in a locked wooden jewelry box on the closet shelf, the letters that she told Judy about.

"I don't know what's in them," Judy had said, her eyes like marbles, blue and pretty but glassy, emotionless. "She just mentioned them to me before—before—and she told me she wanted you to read them."

His mother-in-law touched his arm, and some compassion came back into her gaze. "She loved you so very much, Sam," she told him, the gentleness in her tone shoving the ax a little deeper. "No one made her as happy as you did."

So now he's sitting on his bed, the bed he shared with her, the bed he'll have to sleep alone in for the first time in six years, with the box open next to him and the first letter in his hand. He's been sitting here for the past ninety minutes, but he can't get past the first paragraph.

_Dear Sam,_

_By the time you read this letter, I'll probably be gone; I wish I had more time to spend with you, with our babies, but this is just the way things are. I'm so sorry, sweetheart, and I love you so much. I know you won't think so at this point, because I've left you, because I've kept this a secret, but I do. Oh, God, I do love you. _

He wants to crumple the letter up in his fist, wants to throw the whole damn box away, but he can't. He can't, because it was the last thing Quinn will ever give him, because it was her hand that moved the pen and brushed the page, because she wanted him to read them.

"Daddy?"

Sam looks up to find his oldest son, his only son, six year old Chris, standing in the doorway, his little black suit ill-fitted because they had to borrow it from Rachel and Noah's son, Billy, who is two years older.

He briefly thanks God that this child looks almost exactly like him. He couldn't deal with Lily right now, his little ray of sunshine that looks so much like Quinn that it would only serve to shove that ax so deep it may sever his spine, and he'll never move again.

"Hey, buddy," Sam says, shifting guiltily in front of the hole in the wall so that he blocks it with his body. "Come here."

The boy crawls onto the bed and burrows his head in Sam's chest, his little arms cinching as tightly as they can around his waist. Sam's throat tightens until it's the width of an apple stem, and he presses his lips to the crown of his son's head.

When he realizes Chris is crying—when he hears the shaky, wet breaths, feels the sobs vibrating through his incredibly small back—Sam bites his tongue, hard enough to draw blood, so that he won't cry, too.

"It's okay," he murmurs. "It's going to be okay, I promise."

"Daddy," comes the cracked, muffled voice. "I don't understand."

He closes his eyes so tightly that the muscles in his cheeks ache.

"I don't either, little man. I don't either."

/

Later, when his kids are fast asleep, Sam sits at the kitchen table, where the chair isn't as nearly as comfortable as his bed and he isn't at risk of falling asleep. He doesn't want to sleep, not with her handwriting printed on the backs of his lids or with her words streaming through his mind.

_Dear Sam,_

_By the time you read this letter, I'll probably be gone; I wish I had more time to spend with you, with our babies, but this is just the way things are. I'm so sorry, sweetheart, and I love you so much. I know you won't think so at this point, because I've left you, because I've kept this a secret, but I do. Oh, God, I do love you. _

_Do you want to know when I knew? You'd think, because of what I did, because of my mistake, that it would be after you came back to Lima. But it was the time you convinced me to see Avatar, and we sat on the couch in your living room, and you were glued to the screen. If I hadn't known how many times you'd seen it, I would have thought this was your first._

_Instead of watching the movie, I watched you. You laughed, you gaped, you got emotional as if you had never seen it before. You were so absorbed that I probably could have stripped down right in front of you and you wouldn't have turned away._

_I wanted that. Partly in an envious way—I'd never been that enthusiastic about anything, and I wondered if life would be better like that—but also in the sense that I wanted it in my life. I wanted you to be there with your infectious, puppy-dog grin when you found out I got into college, when I accepted your proposal of marriage, when I told you we were going to have a baby. I wanted that more than I had ever wanted anything, and it threw me for a loop. It scared me._

_But we're not going to go into that here, not yet. I just wanted to say that I got what I wanted. I had that smile through all the milestones of my life, of our life, and it means everything._

_Love always,_

_Quinn. _


	2. Chapter 2

**Letter Six**

He hasn't seen his daughter since the funeral.

It's been two days, and someone or other—Judy, Rachel, Santana Lopez-Pierce or her wife, someone from glee who can't look him in the eye—has always been there. Chris manages to make his way into Sam's—used to be Sam and Quinn's, now it's just his—bedroom, but Lily has remained in someone else's care, and that's how Sam needs it to be for now.

So far, Sam has read five other letters, and he can't bring himself to read another one. The first one, though short, physically and emotionally weakened him. He hasn't been out of bed in forty-eight hours, except occasional trips to the bathroom. He hasn't eaten, and despite all the time he's been in bed, he hasn't slept, either.

He has the blinds pulled all the way down, and is for the first time grateful for the curtains that Quinn insisted they get, even though the whole interior decorating shtick never appealed to him.

"Why bother with curtains? I'm just going to be looking at you, anyway."

She'd smiled at him, lighting up the aisle of Bed, Bath, and Beyond. "Well, by that logic, all we really need is a bed."

Sam grinned. "A mattress, really."

"And your Spiderman sheets?"

"No! Captain America."

"Right, of course. I should have known."

Now, though, he has those curtains across the windows so that no light at all makes it into the room. There isn't even a thread of light beneath the bedroom door from the hallway, because he's stuffed a towel under there. Chris sometimes breaks the darkness by opening the door, but he always shuts it quickly and climbs into bed with Sam.

On the third day, the door opens several hours ahead of schedule—his son, his lonely, heartbroken, tearstained son, usually comes to him at night, right before his bedtime—and without the usual careful ceremony.

The light from the hall is literally blinding, and all Sam can see are amoeba-like blobs of color that roll across his line of vision. He vaguely makes out a tall, misshapen figure move toward the window and pulls away the curtains, yank up the blinds. It moves toward him and stuffs a smaller, warmer, sweet-smelling figure into his arms.

"Da?"

Lily.

Sam's eyes adjust painfully, slowly, and he thinks, _this is what the rest of my life is going to be like. _This gradual, agonizing ascension back into the world, each time like ripping off a Band-Aid over and over, readjusting to the fact that Quinn is gone.

He recognizes Santana Lopez-Pierce standing in front of him, dark eyes red-rimmed like his own must be, hands propped on her hips.

"Okay, Evans," she says, and he's briefly surprised that she doesn't call him Trouty, "enough is enough. Your daughter needs you."

He feels Lily's little fingers curling into the material of his shirt, her face pressing into his stomach, and his arms wind around her. "I'm sorry," he says, to her, to Santana, to Quinn, to his son, to himself. "I'm sorry."

Santana sits on the bed next to him, and when she lays a hand on his back, it's as painful as though she'd struck him with a closed fist. "Sam."

That's it, just his name, spoken so gently, and he's crying. Crying harder than he's ever cried in his life, crying for the first time since she died, crying openly.

It takes him a while before he realizes that he's speaking.

"I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't see, she didn't tell me—I'm so sorry—I'm so fucking sorry—I didn't know, I didn't know…"

And then Santana's arms are around him, around him and Lily, and she's rocking him, shushing. "No one did," she says. "No one knew."

He looks at her and thinks, for a minute, that his tears have somehow been pressed to her face like newsprint to Silly Putty. Then he realizes she's crying, too, but this does not compute fully, as if it's a foreign language he only partially understands.

Santana Lopez-Pierce doesn't cry.

Then again, beautiful, vivacious, life-giving wives don't just up and die, either. Life doesn't make sense anymore.

Lily is making alarmed, snuffling noises in Sam's shirt, and Santana strokes her cheek. "It's okay, Little Q," she says. "We're okay. Daddy and Auntie Tana are just a little upset, that's all."

Little Q. The resemblance to her mother is so great that this has been Lily's nickname from day one, and it's how Sam would know a member of the glee club even if he had suddenly gone blind. They all call her that; the only person who calls Lily by her name on a regular basis is Judy.

Even Sam and Quinn call her Little Q.

Called. Quinn called her Little Q.

She peeks up at Sam, and he swears to God, it's worse than any other punch, any bruise, any broken bone, worse than the time he dislocated his shoulder, worse than the pain of waiting for Quinn to come out of surgery after the accident, worse than anything, because he's looking at _her, _those hazel eyes, not just the color, but the fucking shape, and the lovely little mouth, and the eyebrows, those distinctive, arched eyebrows, and that flyaway blonde hair, and it's all he can do not to break down again.

"Hi, Lily-bug," he says, and she smiles up at him, Quinn's smile, but somehow this hurts a little less.

"Dada," she answers, distinctly, and stands up in his lap to wrap her arms around his neck and plant a sweet kiss on his cheek.

Sam closes his eyes, and doesn't open them until he hears her say, "Dada. _Da-da._"

He opens his eyes again. "What, baby?"

Lily is almost two, extraordinarily verbal for her age—knew to call Quinn "Mommy", refers to her brother as Chris-tow-fuh, knows each member of the glee club, and has a range of vocabulary words that range from saying "guh mow'ning" at breakfast and "nigh'nigh" after her nightly bottle to a whole host of household items, as well as people or places outside the home.

"We oh-tay," she says, and it's not a question, but a statement of fact.

We're okay.

/

_Dear Sam,_

_We made love last night, and I think you know something is wrong. _

There had been less than inkling, more of a vague dread, which he'd dismissed.

_I wish I could tell you, but I wouldn't know how to begin, what words to choose. I know this is selfish of me, but I just couldn't handle seeing your pain. I could handle seeing almost anyone else suffer, except Lily and Chris, and can certainly handle my own pain. But not yours. Never yours._

_Anyway, I'm thinking of our first time, how special, how wonderful it was._

_Not that all the other times weren't equally as special in their own right. The time we couldn't keep our hands off each other at the bookstore, and ended up in the wheelchair stall in the bathroom. The time we visited your parents for Thanksgiving during your freshman year of college, and we kept having to stop because it felt too good, and we were getting too loud._

_The time you kissed me while I was making dinner, and we didn't even make it upstairs._

_And, of course, both of the times where we made our children._

_Every time, you touched me like you were afraid I would break in your hands. I always loved when you lost control and couldn't help yourself anymore, because as much as I adore your gentleness, it was your passion that undid me, every time._

_But that first time will always be the most precious. I wish it had been your very first time. I wish I'd been the one with you during that moment. _

He does, too. He thinks of the girls in between briefly dating Mercedes Jones and coming back to Lima, some of whom were perfectly lovely, and how he wished, each time, how he pretended every now and then, that it was Quinn.

_Still, it felt symbolic somehow. Like maybe it wasn't the first time you'd had sex, but it was the first time you'd mad love. I remember the way you closed your eyes, the sound that came out of your mouth that seemed as though it was as much relief as it was pleasure, as if you'd been waiting so long._

_I remember that when you came, you didn't shout or say my name. I just felt your body tense, and then you told me you loved me._

He remembers, vividly, of course. How nervous he'd been, how she smiled encouragingly at him, the sensations that set his body on fire when he entered her. Her hands, burning, on his back, his shoulders, his waist. Her voice, in his ear.

"Faster, Sam. Please, faster."

_I said I loved you, too, and you smiled at me. You held me that night like you hold me every night—close. I think I'll miss that the most._

_Love always, Quinn_


	3. Chapter 3

**Letter Nine**

Four days after the funeral, Sam blindly reaches out and turns on the iPod docking station that still has Quinn's iPod in it, because he needs music, he needs _her _music, but this turns out to be a very bad idea.

It's a bad idea because the first song he hears is Finale A from "Rent", which was one of Quinn's favorite musicals.

It's a bad idea because it's not even the beginning of the song, which would be bad enough, but at the one line that saws through Sam like the teeth of a monster.

_Who do you think you are, leaving me alone with my guitar?_

It's a bad idea because Sam's guitar is sitting where it usually does, on a stand in the corner of the room, because she used to love hearing him play, and God knows he loved to play for her.

When Chris was still young enough for her to nurse, she'd bring him into their bedroom during a late-night feeding, and Sam would play the Beatle's "All My Loving", which somehow always soothed their fussy baby.

Quinn would sing.

"I'll pretend that I'm kissin' the lips I am missin', and hope that my dreams will come true…and then while I'm away, I'll write home every day, and I'll send all my lovin' to you…"

Sam's first impulse is to take up the guitar and smash it into as many pieces as physically possible, because he's never going to play it again, he never will be able to play it again without thinking of her, without thinking of _close your eyes and I'll kiss you, tomorrow I'll miss you, _and he's even on his feet before he realizes that he can't.

He almost laughs. It's the stupidest thing, absolutely ridiculous, but he can't because he knows that Quinn wouldn't want him to.

"She's dead," he says, out-loud, and it's like wiggling a loose tooth with your tongue—even though it hurts, you keep doing it, over and over until the damn thing falls out—so he says it again. "She's dead."

It strikes him that even though it's been almost a week, this is the first time anyone has actually said it, has actually used the word _dead. _

_Passed away, _or_ passed on._

_Left us._

_Gone._

The worst—_in a better place_, as if any place could be better for her than with her family.

Those are all euphemisms, which used to seem ridiculous to him, because it isn't as though this makes it hurt any less. But there's something about the word, the actual word—_dead_—that somehow makes it even more agonizing

It's a word that speaks of eternity, that reminds him of the headstone resting over her grave: immobile, unyielding stone, cold to the touch. It does not attempt to soften the blow of its existence; instead, it stares you right in the eye and forces you to accept reality.

She's dead. She's never coming back.

He'll never hold her hand or kiss her or make love to her or hear her laugh again. He'll never hear her say his name again. He'll never be able to tell her he loves her again.

She won't be there for Chris's first kiss or Lily's high school graduation. She won't grow old with him.

His mind blanks out for the brief journey from the side of the bed to the guitar, but Sam finds himself cradling it in his arms, his fingers automatically curling around the neck.

The iPod moves to the next song, and as soon as he hears the first chord, Sam laughs. Of course she has this song.

_Can you hear me? I'm talking to you, across the water, across the deep blue ocean, under the open sky._

"Oh my, baby, I'm tryin'," he finishes, his voice thick.

He gets up and shuts the iPod off, because as much as he's always liked Colbie Caillat, her voice can never compare with Quinn's, not with this song.

Sam goes back to the guitar and picks it up, carrying it like a sleeping child to the bed. He strums the opening notes that are still so familiar, his lips picking over the words where the iPod left off, even though he doesn't sing, because it's still her part.

He doesn't realize that he has an audience until he finishes and they clap. Sam looks up to see his children, accompanied by Rachel Puckerman, nee Berry, in the doorway.

"Hey," he says.

She smiles, an empty stage smile that's for the children. "Hey."

Rachel shepherds Chris and Lily into the room, and they clamber onto the bed, flanking Sam and pressing against his sides. He lays the guitar aside and holds them close to him, breathing in the sweet, simple scent that seems to dissipate as people get older.

She reaches out and gently brushes her fingers across the belly of the instrument. When she looks up at him, her eyes are over-bright.

He surprises himself by reaching out and taking her hand. He hasn't yet offered comfort to anyone but his children, and a small wellspring of guilt bubbles up in his stomach. Somehow, it hasn't occurred to him that anyone outside the family might be suffering.

"I miss her," Rachel tells him while looking down at their linked hands.

"I miss her, too, Rach. I miss her, too."

She looks up and this time, her smile is genuine, although quivering. "You three meant the world to her, you know?"

Lily reaches for Rachel, and she picks the girl up, who then presses her palms to Rachel's dampened cheeks. "Wah-tah?" she asks, puzzled.

"No, sweetheart, not water. Auntie Rach is crying," Rachel explains gently. "She's sad."

Lily's expression clouds and her mouth becomes tremulous. "Mama," she says, and for a horrible moment, Sam thinks she's asking for her mother.

But Rachel only nods. "Yes, because of your mama," she says.

"She's not coming back," Chris pipes up solemnly, his face still buried against Sam's ribcage. "Not ever."

It occurs to Sam that the word "heartbreak" is so small, so inadequate. The pain in his chest is less like something breaking, less like the sharp agony of a bone snapping or the ragged edges of a shattered plate, and more like there is this amazing pressure on his heart, compressing it until it's flat and twisted and useless.

As she usually does, Rachel surprises him.

"That's not entirely true," she says carefully, and sits on the bed next to them. "She'll show up in ways that you won't always expect."

"Like what?"

Sam rubs the boy's back, watching Rachel and his daughter over the top of his head. He wants to know, too.

"Well, you laugh just like your mom," Rachel says. "With your mouth wide open."

For the first time in days, Sam actually chuckles. It's a small, stunted sound that feels rough in his throat, but it's there nonetheless.

"And _you,_" Rachel continues, speaking to Lily and tickling her little stomach, "you just look like someone threw your mom in the washer and shrunk her."

The baby shrieks with laughter, her face lighting up with the pure unadulterated joy only found in the very young. Again, his own laughter bubbles out of him, and this time, it's not as painful.

"What else?" Chris presses.

"You're smart like she is," Sam says, and Rachel favors him with a steadier smile. "You definitely got your love of reading from her, not from me."

Together, he and Rachel spend hours piecing Quinn and her children together, finding small idiosyncrasies and big habits alike that they could see in the little blondes next to them. By the end, the kids are drowsy and smiling, and before Rachel carries them to bed, she kisses Sam on the forehead.

"We forgot the biggest thing," she stage-whispers, and he smiles at her.

"Yeah? What's that?"

"How much they love you."

/

_Dear Sam,_

_Remember the time I fell off the ladder while I was cleaning the gutters and broke my wrist?_

_You didn't even want me to do it, but you were recovering from a cold, and I didn't want to make you get up. Not to mention the fact that the feminist in me refused to let you do something just because people viewed it as a "man's" chore._

_I don't know if you saw me through the window or if you heard the crash, but you were there before the pain even registered._

He'd seen it through the living room window, where he had been stretched out on the couch with a blanket and a bowl of chicken noodle soup. There is still a stain from the spilled broth.

_You picked me up and you said, "Quinn, where does it hurt? Are you okay? Talk to me." That's when you noticed how my wrist was swelling up like a balloon. By the look on your face, you would have thought my hand had been lopped off entirely, or there was a cobra attached to my fingers._

"_Baby, I'm fine," I said, even though my wrist was really starting to hurt. "I promise you, I'm fine."_

_But you rushed me to the hospital anyway, even though you were so hopped up on cold medicine that it's a miracle you didn't crash the car into a tree. The ER nurse asked you if I'd hit my head, and you said, "No, I don't think so." I reached up and tried to smooth the worry lines out of your forehead, which made you laugh, but the nurse looked at us like we were insane._

It's something she always used to do, because she felt he worried too much or too easily, especially about her.

_We went home, me with a freshly minted cast, and you kept taking your eyes off the road to look at me. "Sam," I said. "I swear, I'm fine."_

_And you smiled a little and said, "I know. I just like looking at you."_

_You leaned over and kissed my cheek, and I hoped it was dark enough that you didn't notice me blushing. We held hands for the rest of the ride home._

_Moments like that make me love you so much that it almost breaks my heart._

_Love always, Quinn_


	4. Chapter 4

**Letter Twelve**

It's been a full seven days since the funeral, and Sam is praying.

His mom taught him to always say his prayers before going to sleep, and although he grew out of kneeling at his bedside with his forehead pressed to clasped hands, he'd still prayed. Laying in bed next to Quinn, he would pray for his family, which was in essence praying for himself—if they were safe, healthy, and happy, that was all Sam needed.

At first, he looked back on these prayers as stupid. His family is broken now, after all, irrevocably. If there is a God, why is Quinn gone?

But he's in the bed that now seems far too large, a vast desert that is parching the life from his bones, and his mind unspools into a lengthy conversation with someone up above.

Except it's not God this time. It's Quinn.

"I miss you," he says out-loud, his own low voice startling in the darkness. "I miss you so damn much."

He turns his face into the pillow she used to sleep on, and fuck, it still smells like her, and he pulls it lengthwise against his body and he cries. It's only the second time that he's cried, and the words are still spilling from his lips.

"Come back," he's begging, as if that will work. "Please, please, come back, I miss you, I need you, come back. I can't do this on my own…"

He isn't sure what he means by "this", if he means functioning in general or moving through the life they were supposed to lead together. Either prospect is agonizing, a yoke strapped to his shoulders that sometimes renders him immobile.

"Please…Quinn, please…"

Without intending to, Sam finds himself on his knees next to the bed. He folds his hands together out of habit and closes his eyes.

"I know you'll watch out for us," he says. "I know you will. Not just our kids, but our glee club family, too."

Sam takes a deep breath, and he finds that he is strangely nervous.

"Help your mom. I think she's having the hardest time out of anyone."

He can't imagine the unyielding horror of losing a child. All his life, Sam wanted very much to be a father, but even so, the love he has for his children sometimes overwhelms him, as much as the love they have for him is sustaining.

When you lose someone you love, Sam now knows, there is a gaping hole in your life where they used to be. And you feel that emptiness wherever you go, because a world that used to be so full of them becomes a coffee cup with the bitter dregs sticking to the bottom of the mug—painful reminders, little things, that tear you open all over again.

But if it's a child…your own features, the way you walk or make your 6's or your m's, the years of a life that would not exist without you must rise up and grab ahold of you at any given moment. You are never safe. It is never over.

He decides that he will call Judy at a more earthly hour. Maybe ask her if she needs anything done around the house, or just drink coffee with her and talk about the girl their worlds centered around.

"Help me," he whispers plaintively. "Just—please, Quinn, help me."

With his eyes closed, it's easy to picture her. His mind conjures up an image of the time he found her most beautiful: the tilt of her smile, the honey tint to her eyes the when early afternoon sunlight slanted across her face, the oddly poetic curl of her fingers as she offered the test to him.

He had hardly been able to speak. "We're—it's—?"

She laughed. His hands were shaking, and she'd placed the pregnancy test on the sink to clasp them in both of hers. "Yes," she said. "We're going to have a baby, Sam."

Now, Sam leaves his room and moves down the hallway to Chris's, which is right next door to theirs—well, his.

He used to do this all the time when Chris was first born, waking up in the middle of the night to watch his beautiful little boy sleep. Sam, who for so long had taken the mechanics of his own body for granted, was stunned to watch the simplest things—Chris breathing or blinking, especially Chris smiling.

He'd done such things a million times and thought nothing of it, but with this glorious little person that he made with someone he loved as much as he loved Quinn, it was simply miraculous.

There is a window just to the right of Chris's bed, moonlight pouring through to fall on his face. Sam smiles faintly, wondering if there was a celestial…person shedding light on his son's bed.

"My boy," Sam murmurs, his fingers dipping into the pool of moonlight on Chris's cheek, keeping his touch feather-light so as not to wake him. "My boy."

Chris is sprawled on top of his sheets, his comforter tangled around his feet, his hands splayed on either side of his face. He isn't a small boy by any means—even though he's only six, there are already hints that he'll be almost as tall as Sam by the time he's thirteen. His shoulders will be broad like his, too, and Sam's lips quirk at the thought that he's inherited the trouty mouth gene.

After tucking his son in more securely, he goes to Lily. She sleeps soundly in her crib, curled in a small ball around her favorite stuffed animal, a lamb that is a gift from Judy. Sam's throat constricts at the sight of her, at how beautiful she is.

Whether she senses him somehow, or if she just wakes up, Lily slowly rolls over and looks at him. Her eyes fasten onto his face, and he smiles.

"Dada?" she mumbles, rubbing the sleep from her eyes with one chubby little hand. "Dada?"

She reaches for him, imperious as any queen, and ever the obedient subject, Sam picks her up. Her head lolls against his chest; she'll be asleep again in minutes.

"I love you, baby girl," he says, and he swears that she smiles.

"Lah you."

His daughter falls asleep in his arms, her fingers curled gently into the material of his faded t-shirt. Sam lays her back in his crib and goes back to bed.

/

It seems to make sense that the letter he reaches in the morning is about their babies.

_Dear Sam,_

_I'm going to tell you something here that I've never told you, or anyone, before._

_After Beth, I wasn't sure I wanted to have any more kids. I felt like any experience in any following pregnancy would just serve to remind me of her, of how much I lost in that year, of how lonely I was. I was afraid of falling apart again, like I did for a while when Shelby brought her back into my life. And I honestly didn't believe I'd be a good mother._

_But when I fell in love with you, I began to think differently. I started having dreams of little blonde children with wide blue eyes like yours, a little boy who rode on your shoulders at the state fair and a little girl who looked at you like you struck the match that lit the sun._

_I saw how much you wanted kids, and it melted me. I wanted your children more than I wanted children in general. I think now that if I hadn't fallen for you, if I hadn't married you, I wouldn't have changed my mind._

_But I did—I did fall for you, I did marry you, and I did change my mind. I've never been so happy about anything._

_I'll never forget the look on your face when I told you we were going to have Chris. You smiled so hard I saw all your teeth, but you were crying, too, and I don't think you even realized it. You kissed me, so carefully, and you held me so close I could feel your heart beating. You said "I love you, I love you" over and over. At first I thought you were talking to me, but then I realized you were talking to the baby, too._

_Since I knew that you hated horror movies, and remembering the time I cut my finger slicing cucumbers for a salad and it was the first time I'd seen anyone go "as white as a sheet", I thought you were going to be a bit of a wreck in the delivery room. But you were a trouper! I don't think you looked when you cut the cord, but you were still very brave._

He hadn't. He'd glimpsed the blood-soaked sheets between Quinn's legs out of the corner of his eye and almost fainted, but he chewed on the inside of his cheek to keep himself steady.

_The way you held Chris, as if he were made of gold and porcelain, made me fall in love with you all over again. "Thank you," you said, and I laughed, but you shook your head. "I mean it. Thank you."_

_You're welcome. You are more than welcome._

_You, Sam Evans, are the best father those kids could ever ask for. I knew you would be when you were sixteen years old, and I was proven right time and time again. I wish more than anything that I could be with you, raising them, but I know if I had to leave them, I couldn't have left them with anyone better than you._

_Love always, Quinn_


	5. Chapter 5

**Letter Twenty**

Sam is thinking about time.

It's been two and a half weeks since the funeral, and the way time keeps passing just boggles his mind. Quinn was the moon that ruled the tides of his breathing, the sun that melted his blood when the world froze him over. He can't believe that everything has not ground to a halt at the loss of her.

If he closes his eyes—which he does, often; it's not that he's sleeping, but more like he's passing the hours until morning and he might as well shut his eyes and pretend—he can picture her at any time, healthy and whole and alive.

Last night, he relived their first kiss.

Their first actual kiss, that is, not his awkward attempt in this astronomy classroom. This was after their not-date-then-date at Breadstix, and they were walking home. He'd at first been embarrassed that he had no car, that her mother had needed to bring her to the restaurant, but then she reached out and took his hand as they ascended her street.

The warmth of her skin, the sensation of her slender fingers entwining with his, drove every feeling but happiness from his mind. She smiled at him, the streetlights gleaming on her perfect white teeth.

"This is nice," she'd said.

He smiled back at her and nodded. They walked the rest of the way in silence, their linked hands swinging gently between them. When they reached her front porch, he just thought, _Go for it, Evans._

So he let their hands part, and he cradled her face between his palms and kissed her with the lightest pressure he could, giving her the opportunity to pull away. Instead, much to his pleasure and to a serious amount of surprise, she threaded her fingers through his hair and deepened the kiss.

Sam remembers just feeling warm, as if bathing in sunlight. He'd never been kissed before and was worried about what to do with his hands, not to mention his tongue.

When she pulled back, Quinn had touched his face, and he felt his heart stutter in its beating. "I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Please," Sam blurted out.

She'd laughed.

In the present, Sam smiles faintly. If you'd asked him then whether he'd be married to her, if they'd have two beautiful children, he would have fervently answered, "God, I hope so", and though with a heavy dose of hope, there would be more than a little doubt.

His arms physically ache to hold her, as if the muscles are atrophying. The ache—not just in his chest or his arms, but his head, and for some reason his feet—is at some points unbearable, and all he wants to do is scream until his voice is a mere thread of sound.

He's almost halfway through the box of letters that Quinn left for him, and the closer he gets to the end, the less he can bear to read them. Sam is afraid that finishing them will be like losing her all over again, and he can barely cope with this initial loss.

These letters are allowing him to hold onto her for just a little bit longer. He's learning things about her that surprise him—like she's completely and, in her words, "irrationally" afraid of bees; she had a brief and now humiliating crush on Schue in her freshman year; before singing her first solo in front of the glee club, she had to run to the bathroom and throw up.

She almost proposed to him first.

When Sam reads these letters, he can hear her voice in his ear, as if she's reading them out-loud to him. He can hear where she would have laughed or where her voice would have broken with emotion. The faintest trace of her perfume clings to the paper, and each inhalation feels like a punch to the stomach.

Each time he finishes a letter, he runs his thumb over the last three words on the page. _Love always, Quinn._

Once, after they were first married, Quinn asked him what he would do if something happened to her.

"Suffer," he'd quipped, only half kidding, and Jesus, how right he was.

She smiled and touched his face—not a caress, but laying her warm palm against his cheek. Sam closed his eyes and hummed quietly at the simple pleasure of it.

"I mean, would you get remarried?" she asked, and he looked at her.

"No."

"Sam…"

"No. I don't want—you're my wife. You're the only wife I ever want to have."

Quinn had sighed and snuggled closer to him, her head resting over his heart. "I love you, Sam."

"I love you, too. More than anything."

Back then, he was twenty-four, completely in love, still getting used to the title of "husband". He never truly believed that the world would put himself and Quinn through so much, not just together but as people, and then deliver this ultimate cruelty.

Obviously, he was wrong, but now he thinks about the question again.

He can't imagine anyone ever affecting him the way Quinn did. Just seeing her enter a room was enough to get his heart pumping faster, and when she smiled at him, or held his hand, or God, when she kissed him…

His grandfather had kept bees, a colony in a slated white wooden box, so that he could make and sell his own honey and natural lip balms, which, he used to tease, was fitting.

Sometimes, he would let Sam have the first drip of honey from the comb. It was tantalizingly sweet, to this day one of the most delicious treats he'd ever had, and even that didn't compare to the taste of Quinn's lips.

Sam had tried so hard to fall out of love with Quinn between the time they broke up and when he returned to Lima. But every time he kissed Santana, he thought of the way Quinn's hair had felt, wrapped around his fingers.

Kissing Mercedes, he remembered the lemons and vanilla scent that clung to Quinn's skin.

The handful of women that he'd slept with during his time as a stripper was even worse. There was no connection to Quinn—they didn't even know her, could not accuse him of liking her more because she was "blonde, and awesome, and so smart", didn't still have a cardigan of hers in their closet from when they shared a house.

He lost his virginity to a redhead who couldn't have been more than three or four years older than he was. She was incredibly sexy, and surprised him with her kindness.

"First time?" she asked, when he fumbled with the condom, and at his nod, she'd smiled with genuine gentleness. "I'll go slowly."

And she had, taking her time with him, at least attempting to bring some sort of emotional connection to it. Sam appreciated the effort, he truly did, and there was no denying that it had been physically pleasurable.

Still, afterward, he'd stuffed a corner of the pillow into his mouth to muffle the sound, and he cried. His body seized with barely contained sobs, and when the woman woke up, she had just laid a hand on his back and let him get it out.

"Is there someone else?"

"Yes."

"Does she love you?"

"No."

The woman smiled again, and she'd suddenly appeared older. "I doubt that."

It had been almost five full months to that day when Quinn told him she loved him for the first time. Sitting in her car—that fucking car, only six weeks away from becoming scrap metal—with the light from the radio console on her face, she'd leaned over, kissed him, and said those three words.

Sam was unable to keep the smile from unfurling across his face. "Really?"

She laughed. "Really."

"I love you, too," he said, and when his voice wobbled, he did not try to hide it, as he would have with anyone else. "I love you so much."

"I know."

/

_Dear Sam,_

_You know how you do something spectacularly embarrassing, and your brain will pull that moment out of your memory bank for no particular reason and slap you around the face with it? It could have been when you wet your sleeping bag at your first sleepover, when you were six, and you could be lying in bed at twenty-eight—and still be incredibly humiliated, as if it had just happened._

_The look on your face when you said, "I'm not your boyfriend", after Santana told you what I had done…it's like that, but worse. It's like comparing a bruise to a scar. I'd rather replay my most embarrassing moments over and over for twenty years, on a closed loop, than ever see that pain in your eyes again._

_I wish I could explain to you why, but no excuses I could muster would ever be enough. I was afraid for a long time that you would never trust me again, but it occurred to me, slowly but surely, that you do. You truly don't hold my mistakes against me, and the thought honestly boggles my mind._

_My whole life, anything I did wrong was thrown back in my face, over and over again. My father wasn't the type of person to forgive or forget. I failed one class for one semester when I was thirteen, and even though I never got anything lower than an A- as a final grade after that, I was constantly reminded. _

_I would get a B+ on a test, and he'd look over the top of his newspaper at me and say, "Be careful, Quinny. We don't want a repeat of World History, do we?"_

_When I found out I was pregnant with Beth, I sat in the bathroom and cried for hours. I knew if he wouldn't let me forget an F in one class, he would never forgive me for this. Of course, I was more than right about that. I haven't heard from him in over fifteen years. _

_But you, my sweet Sam, you don't have a resentful bone in your body. I was terrified when I asked you out, which, by the way, was the first time I'd ever done something like that. You took so long to answer that I thought for sure you'd say no, and I just turned away from you, already in tears._

_Your hand on my shoulder was all it took, and by the time you had your arms around me, I knew._

"_I missed you so much," you said. "Every day."_

_I tried to apologize, I tried many times after that, but each time, you would just smile and shake your head. "Quinn, it's in the past now," you protested, and it was that simple. It was over, and I couldn't take it back, but that didn't mean we couldn't move forward._

_I will never stop being amazed by you, in this life or the next._

_Love always, Quinn_


	6. Chapter 6

**Letter Twenty-seven**

Even though it's been years, even though the only times Quinn has been to the hospital, before her death, was for her broken wrist and to give birth to their kids, Sam still has nightmares about the car accident.

It's the first time he's slept since Quinn's death, and it feels as though he has only managed maybe twenty minutes of sleep before he jackknifes upright as violently as though someone has jerked him up by puppet strings. The first thing he does is quest his hands out to the other side of the bed, for the comfort of his wife.

His heart is hammering in his throat and his own rapid breathing echoes back at him like the susurration of the ocean. Sam rolls out of bed, the landing of his unsteady feet muffled by the carpet. By the time he reaches the kitchen, his heartbeat has steadied in his chest, but his vision is still swimming.

There are several variants of the dream, all of which end—

Well, they end the way his life is now—with a loss so big and raw that it stretches in front of him like this vast frozen lake that he's expected to swim across while the ice seeps into his bones.

He makes himself a cup of coffee and leans against the counter to drink it while the sun sends spokes of light above the trees that ring their property. He's proud of this house, even now, when emotions other than grief or anger are dull and fleeting.

They designed it together, with the help of her brother-in-law, Robert, who is an architect. "You're a natural, Sam," Robert had told him, and Quinn smiled.

"Sam is good at everything," she said casually, as if stating that the sky was blue.

Sam sets his coffee mug down and picks up the kitchen phone from its cradle on the counter. They're one of the few people who still have a house phone, but Quinn insisted.

"I'm a little leery about cell phones," she'd joked, and Sam had smiled for her, despite the fact it felt like someone had pierced his chest with a butcher's knife. "Besides, cell batteries die or the phones get lost or stolen. I want you or the kids to always be able to reach me somehow."

He dials Judy's number, knowing she'll be awake. Like Sam, she hasn't been sleeping well lately, and sure enough, when she answers, her voice is crisp and free of sleep.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Judy. It's—it's Sam."

She sighs, a motherly sound, something that Quinn inherited from her—_sigh, _Chris, your room is a mess; _sigh, _Sam, Lily has mud all over her dress, weren't you watching her? But it was always accompanied by a faint smile, a hand brushing his shoulder or the small of his back.

It was camaraderie, affection, a look, a touch, a sound that said, "This is our family. It's hectic sometimes, a little crazy, but it's ours."

"Hi, Sam," Judy's saying, and then she pauses. "Bad dreams?"

Sam blinks stupidly in surprise for a few seconds before remembering that she can't see him. "Uh, yeah, how'd you know?"

There's a faint chuckle in his ear. "Mother's intuition. What were they?"

His stomach clenches. "It was—the, uh—"

"Accident?"

"Yes," Sam says, feeling a strange sense of relief come over him. "Yes, the accident."

"I have them, too," his mother-in-law admits quietly, and his stomach tightens further.

"I'm sorry," he says, without intending to, without being sure exactly what he's apologizing for.

Calling so early? Bothering her with his nightmares, when she has plenty of her own?

Not being able to take care of her daughter?

"Don't be sorry, Sam," she tells him, and the gentleness in her voice reminds him of the day of the funeral, of the ax biting into his body. "It's okay."

He realizes that she isn't just absolving him of this minor sin, but of the bigger one, the _biggest _one. Sam slumps against the counter, lets it break his fall as he drops to the floor. He draws his knees up and rests his forehead against them.

"I can't do this."

His voice is heavy, barely able to crawl out of the tunnel of his throat, and for the first time since Quinn's death, he feels exhausted. Not sad, not crippled by grief, but simply _tired—_as if he honestly can't stand up anymore, can't force his feet to carry him forward. It's too much, the weight of living without Quinn; not to mention he needs to be strong for his kids, when he feels as insubstantial as a spider's web.

"You have to."

Sam closes his eyes, and he isn't sure he's going to be able to open them again. "I know."

Judy sighs again, and then she says, "I always knew it was going to be you two. Even through that whole debacle with that Hudson boy, I knew it was going to be you two together in the end."

He smiles against his knee, and his eyelids feel a little lighter. "Really?"

"I saw her when she came home from your first date. I'd never seen her smile like that before. She was honestly…glowing."

He sits up. "She—she was?"

"Oh, God, yes. Every time she said your name, she smiled without even realizing it. And she said your name a lot, trust me. She hardly stopped talking about you."

Sam chuckles in the back of his throat. "I hardly stopped talking about _her,_" he says. "My brother started charging me every time I said her name."

"Ah, I should have thought of that."

By the time he hangs up, Sam feels a little stronger. Maybe it's the caffeine starting to pump its way through his system, or maybe it's proof that Quinn loved him, but he's able to stand up, rinse out his mug, and begin to fix breakfast for his children.

There's bacon sizzling in the pan, which of course makes him think of her—she honestly went through several packs a week, like a smoker, when she was pregnant with both their kids—and pancakes forming in the griddle when his son comes down, Lily balanced on his slender hip.

"Bacon!" chirps Lily, delighted, and Sam hides his grin in his second cup of coffee, thinking, _Definitely my Little Q._

"Hey, guys," he says, sliding the bacon onto a padding of paper towels. "Hungry?"

"Yes," Chris says fervently, taking a deep breath in. "You haven't cooked in a long time, Daddy."

Chagrin seeps into his stomach and pools in flags of color in his cheeks. "Yeah, I know, bud."

He feels a small, warm hand on his back. "It's okay," Chris says softly. "I understand."

Sam focuses on flipping the pancakes, and this way he is able to smile. "I know you do."

/

_Dear Sam,_

_When I was a little girl, I never really dreamed about my perfect wedding. I felt like marriage would be a yoke, something I was expected to want but didn't actually want for myself. I didn't picture the white dress or the chapel, and I certainly didn't picture the groom. I met Finn, and I assumed that this was what I had to settle for—the head cheerleader and the quarterback, the high school stars. _

_I thought that was all I had, that high school was going to be the best years of my life. Of course, I wasn't entirely wrong, but it was those unexpected things that made them fantastic. Glee club. You. _

_Oh, you. My lovely husband. _

_My favorite picture from the ceremony doesn't actually have me in it. The photographer managed to get a shot of you as I was coming up the aisle, and the way you're smiling at me could safely power the city. The way you look at me has always taken my breath away, but this smile, Sam…I don't know if I deserve it._

_You wanted to honeymoon somewhere exotic, like Tahiti or Turkey, but I just wanted to be close to you, alone with you. I loved where we ended up—a small cottage in the Adirondacks, which was basically a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen. I remember waking up to your face next to mine on the pillow, and thinking that I had never noticed how long your eyelashes are before. I was struck by how honestly and completely beautiful you are, in every possible way._

_I told myself these weren't going to be love letters, but in writing to you, I suppose I didn't really have a choice._

_I know you must be suffering right now, and even in this moment, watching you sleep, the thought of your pain is almost overwhelming. I'm not afraid of death, really, or afraid of what the end will be like. But I would give anything not to have to leave you, or our family. _

_Stay strong, Sammy. I have no doubt that you can, but I think right now you won't be so sure. You can do this, my love._

_Love always, Quinn_


	7. Chapter 7

**Letter Thirty**

It's been a month, and it still hurts, it still hurts so fucking much, but today Sam is able to think about repairing the hole in his wall.

The hole is in that slim stretch of wall between the nightstand and the headboard, the first place his fist landed from his perch on the edge of the bed. He knows it can be filled in easily, and painted over, but he feels a bizarre fondness for this hole. Maybe it's because this is the first trophy of his own fierce anger, which he never even knew he was capable of, or maybe it's just that it seems patently unfair somehow that there are things you can fix so easily, and others you simply can't.

He is only thinking about this at all because he has reached the last letter, marked neatly as such on the outside of the envelope—the word _Thirty, _written out in Quinn's lovely, elegant printing that verged on the edge of cursive. This one, he realizes, he has actually seen her write, hunched over in her hospital bed with her blonde hair falling between them to hide her words.

"What's that, babe?" he'd asked, his voice warped and wobbling, because at that point, he knew in his heart that she was leaving him.

She smiled up at him, still so incredibly beautiful, even though LAM had stripped her cheeks of color, thinning her lips and dulling the shine of her eyes. "Later," she mouthed, since the oxygen mask over her face prevented easy speech.

Sam knows now what took her from him, knew what she had struggled with in secret for over three weeks. Lymphangioleiomyomatosis, or LAM, is a lung disease which is often misdiagnosed as asthma, and slowly crept through his wife's lungs.

At first, it was things that Sam doesn't hate himself for overlooking—shortness of breath, coughing. In the end, she was coughing up blood, and fluid accumulated around her lungs.

She collapsed while he was at work, and by the time he'd reached the hospital, she was already hooked up to several machines that were laboring to keep her alive. The first thing she did when she saw Sam was smile at him, and it almost took his knees out from underneath him.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, his voice cracking. "Why didn't you tell me, Quinn?"

Quinn just shook her head, clasping his hands between hers with a pleading expression on her face, which spoke volumes. _Not right now, _it said. _Not now._

So he held her hands, and spoke with her doctors, and asked Judy to bring the kids to see their mother.

Upon seeing her, Lily burst into tears, hiding her face in Judy's neck. Chris's lower lip trembled dangerously, but he didn't cry. Quinn gathered them onto the bed with her, and it was the only time Sam saw her break down, tears creeping from the corners of her eyes to drip off her chin and into her children's hair.

After they left, she raised her hand and fit her palm precisely to the contours of his cheek, as if they had been made for each other, for this touch. This gesture was just as eloquent as the expression on her face has been earlier.

_I love you._

_I'll miss you._

_I'm so sorry._

She slipped into a coma four hours later, and by the time the sun set, she was gone.

Today, Sam buys spackle and paint. He fills in the hole and paints it over before he notices that the color he chose and the color of the wall is ever so slightly different, standing out form the original color like a bruise that has not quite faded yet.

It's fitting.

When his tools are put away, he places a few calls to a select group of people. He asks them to bring a few things, though specifically what they bring is up to them. And then he goes into the living room, where Chris and Lily are watching cartoons.

"Hey, guys," he says, and they look up at him, their sweet little faces shining like beacons in the light from the television. "What do you say we go visit Mommy?"

By the time they reach the cemetery, the rest of them are already there. Puck and Rachel stand with their son, who is a carbon copy of his father but has the high-flying dreams of his mother. Brittany and Santana, with their own children, twins Elias and Elena. Judy.

The rest of them, their beloved glee club, could not make it, but Sam knows they would be here if they could. The thought alone is comforting.

He has his guitar slung across his back, and Lily on his hip. Chris clings to his right hand.

"Ready?" he says, and they all nod.

They reach the headstone, and Rachel moves forward first. She tucks a playbill from _Wicked _against the headstone. "It was the first play we saw when she came to visit me," she says quietly. "I—I thought it was fitting. She was my Galinda."

Santana and Brittany have brought a joint gift, a picture of the three of them, their arms slung around each other's necks and their smiles as wide as the sky. Brittany is crying too hard to speak, so Santana says, "You can't break up the Unholy Trinity, Q. Not ever."

Judy is empty-handed except for the tiny gold cross, its chain entwined around her fingers, which she presents to Sam. "For Lily," she says, and then: "I couldn't choose just one thing. Too many memories. Too much life."

She lays her hand against the headstone and smiles bracingly at Sam. "Your turn."

Sam pulls his guitar forward and begins to play, to sing, though his voice is choked.

_Never knew I could feel like this, like I've the sky before…want to vanish inside your kiss, every day I love you more and more. _

Rachel starts laughing and crying at the same time, wrapping a supportive arm around Sam's waist. Puck bites his lip viciously, but he embraces Sam too, layering his arm on top of his wife's.

_Listen to my heart, can you hear it sing, telling me to give you everything? Seasons may change, winter to spring, but I love you until the end of time. Come what may, come what may, I will love you until my dying day._

By the time he nears the end of the song, everyone is touching him somehow—the Puckermans hold him, the Lopez-Pierces each have a shoulder. Judy has her hand along the back of his neck, and the children hold on to his legs.

_There's no mountain too high, no river too wide. Sing out this song and I'll be there by your side. Storm clouds may gather and stars may collide, but I love you until the end of time. _

It feels like it's raining, the way their tears are soaking into him. He's crying too, but there are only a few chords left, so he finishes.

_Suddenly, the world seems such a perfect place…come what may, come what may, I will love you until my dying day._

God, it still hurts, it still feels like some ax has torn his body apart, like someone has ripped something vital away from him and left him battered and bleeding and begging for salvation. And yet…it's a little better. Not much, not enough to fix this, because nothing can really fix this, but it's a tiny step to a place where he and his family, his blood family and his glee club family, can even begin to heal.

With their arms around him, their gifts to Quinn fluttering in the breeze, it's enough to convince him that someday, things will be okay.

/

_Dear Sam,_

_This will not be a letter as much as it will be a list—a list of things I want you to remember, that I beg of you to remember, even though it is incredibly selfish of me to ask this of you._

_Remember our first wedding anniversary, where you thought it would be romantic to bake for me, and bring me dessert in bed. Remember how you burned the cake so badly you set off the fire alarm, and we ate it anyway. Remember how sweet it was._

_Remember when you asked me to marry you, I hit you so hard you almost dropped the ring, and I said, "What took you so long, Evans?"_

_Remember the way I looked at you the first time you introduced me as your wife._

_Remember the fact that Chris's first word was "guitar", and I laughed and accused you of brainwashing our son._

_Remember the day we watched our children sleeping, little Chris holding baby Lily, and you said, "This is all I've ever wanted." Remember that I said, "Me too."_

_Remember the first time we made love after the accident, and I was afraid of what you would think of my scars. Remember how you kissed each and every one of them and told me I was beautiful. Remember my smile, because it meant I believed you._

_Remember the stranger who stopped us on the street and told us what a beautiful family we have._

_Remember when we moved into our house, the house we made together, and how you kissed me in the doorway. Remember how you told me this would mean we'd always be in love and be happy here. Remember how right you were._

_Remember how very, very much you mean to me. Remember that will never change, no matter where I am._

_Remember this pain will not last forever._

_Remember that we will be together again._

_Remember me. _

_Remember us._

_Love always, Quinn _


End file.
